“A lot of times I do things as an impulse and find out my inspirations afterward… It can take me years to find out what I was actually trying to do. — Lykke Li
walking, walking, walking. as I listen to my feet in heavy sandals, turning the corner, I try to pick out sounds as far as I can in the distance. the vague sounds from the stereo of a Jeep Wrangler waiting at a traffic light 1000 yards away. The engine of a landscaping truck struggling up around the first little hill of Maple Avenue. The filtration system of an otherwise hidden swimming pool. A few birds that fly overhead for a second. I pick out as many sounds as I can and imagine a big circle around myself, from my ears to the furthest thing they detect. how funny that my attention can catch sound of the airplane, 40,000 feet or so above, but most of the time, except when I play this little game, I only hear the thoughts between my two ears.
listen, listen listen.
you’ll have to try this out for yourself. It really makes things fun and you will realize how lopsided your muscles for looking and thinking might have developed relative to listening. it’s also fun to see how even on a simple walk, you can bring things from the edge of what you can perceive in full detail. there’s a supernatural feeling when you get better and better at identifying the sounds around you.
and so it’s a fun game. when you start to think again, you can keep listening, for the things on the very edge of what you know.
I have been doing this my entire life, choosing to reroute years of my life to learn something, because I heard about it in casual conversation or read it in a book, because it popped up in my email inbox or instagram feed or general idle chatter. I have often felt awkward about explaining myself; it’s always a funny story about why decided to take a left-hand turn when the road was merging right, but I think it comes down to listening.
one of my favorite, happy-to-be-alive, lock-in-the-heart-vault forever memories is of the montreux jazz festival; not because I saw any of the events in any of their fullness.; not because I saw the mythical wizzened Iggy Pop, a headliner that year, lose his tooth mid-set and continue the rock’n’roll; not because of any instrument or person there; but because, I didn’t really know that the festival was going, I was simply walking, walking, walking like I had been for too many days at that point, and enjoy following the bend of the very beautiful lac leman, all misty mountains, ducklings and yellow flowers, and there was about a minute where I heard some wonderful music traveling across the water into this scene, before descending on the crowds and carts of the festival, and this was perfect.
maybe listening is the opposite of ‘playing chess with life’. it’s the only way I know to live happily almost guaranteed.
when you listen closely, you can really learn important things you want to know, faster than you can than with other kinds of effort. did you know andre agassi learned how to consistently beat boris becker only because he watched back videos of his first three losses so closely, he could see that becker contorted his face each time to where he was serving the ball? it’s slight break in the auditory metaphor, but I just learned this, and I think it’s such a cool example of how if you look or listen closely enough, the answer can be right in front of you.
but even outside of finding the answers, or being led to the most beautiful destination, listening just makes for an enjoyable walk. it’s thrilling to hear, sense, predict, feel things before you can see them. it gives direction and the feeling to move.